


But The Sky’s Too Far Away.

by murg



Category: Original Work
Genre: Brothers, Coming Out, Gen, Symbolism, Trans Male Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murg/pseuds/murg
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“You’re my…my little sibling. I love you, and I only want what’s best. And the way I feel hasn’t changed. Unless you want it to. We’re gonna have to talk about this. Unless you don’t want to.”</i><br/><i>There’s a smudge on the kettle. It blocks out the left side of his reflection. “Not right now,” he mumbles.</i><br/><i>“Right. But someday, right? Unless not. I mean. We’ve got to plan some things. I’ve got a. A lot to understand. As you noticed, last night.” His brother makes that grin, again. </i><br/><i>“Thomas--” he says and stops himself. What is he supposed to say? ‘Thomas, you’re fucking stupid. Thomas, get over it. Thomas, this changes </i>everything.’<i> No.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	But The Sky’s Too Far Away.

But The Sky’s Too Far Away.

 

He wakes up to his brother cursing in the kitchen. An errant thought flits past. His brother doesn’t swear. He feels nothing at the revelation. He groans into his pillow. The sun falls on his arm through the blinds, painting stripes. I feel like an awful camera shot, he thinks fuzzily. I feel like a photo, out of focus. I feel like the people on the local news when they don’t realize they’re on live television and they’re just staring down at their notes or off to the side. 

He sits up and tries to keep his mind carefully blank. His brother is still mumbling, outside. There’s a hush, inside their room, though. A deep, warm hush. The cat scratches against the door, meowing. He scratches his head, sighing, and figures he’ll have to leave, eventually. 

But the door stares at him so dully. You really don’t have to make this so uncomfortable, he wants to say. Surely, we can all forgive and forget. I forgave, after all. And I’m working--I’m _working_ \--on the rest. Not like there’s a choice, anyways. But he doesn’t move and the door doesn’t move and the blinds still lay over the window. 

He heaves himself up and off the bed. Goes to the attached bathroom and flits around the toilet bowl in socks two sizes too big, staring at the bed. I do this every day, he thinks. I get up, somehow. And I’m going to get up, now. And I’m going to turn that doorknob and I’m going to go down those stairs and I. I’m...

“Hey, champ,” his brother says, when he sees him, bleary-eyed and unkempt in the doorway. His brother cracks a lopsided grin at him, probably supposed to be charming, but it only makes him think of the cracked mirror in the bathroom, its jagged edges forming a spiderweb, tentatively creeping out from the corner. The room reeks of burnt bread.

“What are you doing.” He cringes at his own voice. Too flat, too rough. 

“Mom is out,” his brother says as though that explains why he’s standing in the kitchen in a pair of ratty jeans he has never seen his brother wear once, has no idea where they came from, with a pan hissing and a kettle whining on the stove and the smell of burnt bread. 

“So you’re...what. Making breakfast?”

“Making breakfast,” his brother confirms, and eeks that smile out again. “Thought we could have a nice, easy morning and chow down.”

He shifts, feeling his feet slide against the floor. “Did you burn toast?”

“...Yeah,” his brother says and his smile looks like a cringe, now. His eyes are bright. “Yeah, I sure did, champ.”

He finds himself staring at his brother. Blank. “Wow.”

“ ‘Wow,’ ” his brother replies, and his grin goes back to that horrible, uncomfortable thing. 

He ventures into the kitchen, socks sliding, inching his way in like a slug, and comes to a stop before the table. He can hear his blood, pounding in his ears. He’s filled to the brim with blood.

His brother leans down to ruffle his hair. “Welp!” he says brightly. “Guess we’ll just have eggs, then. You like scrambled eggs. We’ll eat scrambled eggs.”

“Okay,” he says. 

“They’ll be ready in just a few minutes,” his brother says as he wrenches open the fridge door. 

He stares at his brother as he darts and curses about the small space. He feels distant and fuzzy. Like a bad camera shot. Like a photo out of focus. Like a person who doesn’t know he’s on tv. Like the sun, on a muggy day, glaring down at all the sinners of the world. Or being glared upon. 

“I want you to know,” his brother says casually, “that I still love you.”

“Thanks,” he says. 

“You’re young,” his brother says and rubs his eye, cracking an egg with the other hand. “You’re so young and you’ve got so much potential. You’re gonna help a lot people, someday.”

“Thanks,” he says. 

The room is bright with sunlight. The kitchen clock chatters when it hits 10:15.

“I’m really proud of you,” his brother says and he wishes fervently that his brother would shut up. “You’re my…my little sibling. I love you, and I only want what’s best. And the way I feel hasn’t changed. Unless you want it to. We’re gonna have to talk about this. Unless you don’t want to.”

There’s a smudge on the kettle. It blocks out the left side of his reflection. “Not right now,” he mumbles. 

“Right. But someday, right? Unless not. I mean. We’ve got to plan some things. I’ve got a. A lot to understand. As you noticed, last night.” His brother makes that grin, again. 

“Thomas--” he says and stops himself. What is he supposed to say? ‘Thomas, you’re fucking stupid. Thomas, get over it. Thomas, this changes _everything.’_ No.

“Peter,” his brother says and curls his tongue around the sound and it’s so _fake_. He blinks his eyes against the world. 

 _“Thomas,”_ he tries again, shifting his eyes to the window. The sun is too bright. It’s too small. It’s grinning uncomfortably at him. It holds secrets. Appraisals and judgments. He blinks against it. He shifts and slides. “Thomas, I don’t. I don’t think we need to do this, right now.”

“Do what?” his brother chirps. “I’m just making breakfast.”

And the burnt smell makes his nose hurt. The light pierces his eyes, but it’s so distant. He thinks of other words they could be saying. He thinks of just spitting it out, in the open. He thinks of just splitting open, apart at the seams. He thinks of days in the park with his brother, playing catch or some facsimile of what _brothers_ do, some stupid, sad play at domesticity, the sun glaring down on them, the wind knocking his trembling knees against each other, his brother laughing and grinning, tugging his cap down so that it won’t blow away. He thinks, briefly, of benediction. Rotten. 

“Right,” he says, feeling terribly defeated. Dull. Dull. 

“Do you want anything in your eggs?”

“No,” he says and wonders when the kettle’s going to start whistling. Screaming bloody murder. It’s been a while. Just sitting there and keening. Today was supposed to be overcast, the weather report said so. Today was supposed to be gray and dead. But the sky’s blue and it’s bright and it hurts. 

He thinks of all the stupid shit he’s done in his life. He thinks of all the trouble he’s gotten in. He thinks of his brother’s face, last night, the strangled “oh, that’s not a funny _joke--”_ and he blinks against that, too. 

His brother grabs some plates. He’s grinning like a kicked dog. 

Peter wants to punch him. 

“Gosh, look at you squinting!” his brother exclaims, as he shoves too-thick scrambled eggs onto the plates. “You should move out of the sun.”

But he doesn’t move. He’s paralyzed. The sun is too bright and too small. “It’s not gonna hurt me,” he says, befuddled. “I’m fine. I’m... I’m fine, Thomas.”

But his brother moves past him, knocking against his right shoulder, and tugs down the blind, grinning, cringing, cracked face. Peter feels a thickness enter his throat. 

“You just gotta be honest with me, champ,” his brother says warmly. Too warmly. Too bright.

But I was, he wants to say. I was. It’s not. It’s not a big deal. I don’t wanna sit here and tell lies that sound more true than the real stuff. I don’t wanna sit here and let you recallibrate. _I_ need to recallibrate, too. I’m… It’s not been easy, Thomas. It’s not been easy. And it won’t ever be. Easy’s a long ways away. Easy’s too far away. I didn’t deserve this pain, I didn’t deserve to live this lie. You said you get it, but you don’t. And you never will. 

“Eggs are ready, champ!” his brother says, and sits down at the table. “Come on.”

He slides across the floor. The cat’s tail knocks against his knees. You never will.

“Want something to drink?” Thomas says. “We’ve got some juice, in the fridge.”

His eyes slide to the kettle. It’s silent. 

Peter says nothing. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This was a section of a short story I wrote. My friend thought this part was the strongest, said it felt very authentic and all that jazz. So here it is as a standalone.


End file.
